FAQ

Integration

What ERPs/PLMs has Inspectorio previously integrated with?

At Inspectorio we are either in the process of, or have fully integrated with, the following PLM/ERPs: FlexPLM, OnePLM, Bamboo Rose, Oracle NetSuite, SAP ERP, Tradestone, Amber Roads, and numerous homemade solutions.

Our integration history however places no limits on our potential. We would be happy to explore an integration with your preferred system to ensure that you can achieve accurate and powerful data synchronization.

Do you support SSL certificates ?

Yes, we fully support SSL certificates. In case your company needs to know more about our SSL certificates (information, expiration dates, etc.), please contact your Customer Success Manager at Inspectorio.

What are your different integration methods?

We support integration via two methods:

API Integration (recommended)
File Transfer

Both are simply methods which enable you to send us Purchase Order data. PO information is all we need for you to be able to conduct inspections successfully on Inspectorio. We highly recommend API Integration as this is a 2-way integration, over File Transfer which is a 1-way integration. The exposed API offers you with much more flexibility to pull and transform data to meet your business needs. In both cases, we are happy to provide all of the support necessary to ensure your integration successfully.

Which integration method should I go with?

We recommend going with API Integration over File Transfer for two main reasons:

It is more flexible and simpler to map data
It allows for two-way communication in your own terms

In order to send requests to the Inspectorio Server API, you will need to build an API client to translate information between your ERP or PLM system and the Inspectorio Server API. Since you will manage this API client, you will be able to make any modifications to alter the type of information you send.

If, for example, once month you want to try and inspect a certain product line that you were not previously inspecting on Inspectorio, you might want to send us purchase orders for this product line only in a specific format for a specific period of time. Rather than making manual and time-consuming edits to accomplish this, you can make minor edits to your API client code to send us the information you want for as long as you want.

Furthermore, once you’ve built your API client to send us Purchase Order information, you’ll be able to utilize that same client to pull any data available via our exposed API, which you can find here. You can retrieve your data at any time using the appropriate credentials. For example, you can pull all completed reports at the end of each day.

How hard is it to start with File Transfer, and then move to API Integration?

There is no added complexity to transition from File Transfer to API Integration. The data mapping efforts done for File Transfer will be reused for API Integration. That said, some of the work done to complete File Transfer is inevitably discarded when transitioning. For example, any scripts written to automatically upload files to the storage service will not be used. This is why we generally recommend starting with API Integration if possible.

Do you support EDI integrations or would it be possible to send an 850 EDI transmission of our POs to Inspectorio?

Inspectorio doesn’t support EDI integrations as the information is usually not sufficient for inspections. Instead, we provide API Integration and File Transfer. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected] and we will happily work with you to reach a solution.

How can I be informed of a change in Inspectorio’s integrations?

You can subscribe to updates on the Announcement page here. In case of a major change, we apply a versioning strategy for API and File Transfer to ensure having 2 major versions running in parallel for a period of time in order for you to implement the changes.

Data

What sort of data does Inspectorio need in order to function properly?

From an integration standpoint, Purchase Orders comprise the minimum data necessary to complete an inspection after your account has been configured in the platform. Product-level information like size, color, style, brand, product line, and product category alongside PO-level information like order quantity, shipment date, supplier, and factory are used by our system to enable you to schedule and execute inspections.

Can you provide us with samples of a purchase order in Inspectorio’s format?

You will find samples of a purchase order in JSON on the API Reference page, more specifically under the resource type “Purchase Order” and the resource method “Create new Purchase Order”.

You will find samples of purchase orders in File Transfer format in the Guides page File Transfer.

Can we retrieve the data generated on Inspectorio?

Yes, you can access it by pulling from the exposed API through your API client and into your internal PLM or ERP system. Then, you can transform the data to meet your business needs. We also offer some file export capabilities directly accessible by end-users of Inspectorio for Bookings and Reports.